Thousands of supporters celebrated the nomination of Mexican Senator Xóchitl Gálvez on Sunday as the 2024 presidential candidate of an opposition alliance set to take on the country’s ruling party.

Gálvez, a spirited communicator who has energized the opposition, is seen as the main candidate to take on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), which is due to announce its own candidate on September 6.

Supporters rallied near the capital’s Angel of Independence monument to herald Gálvez’s nomination for the alliance Frente Amplio por México (Broad Front for Mexico), made official in a ceremony on Sunday.

Gálvez said she received the nomination “with great pride.” She gave remarks in an Indigenous language, before delivering a speech in Spanish.

“Problems are not fixed with ideologies, they are fixed with solutions,” she added, in an apparent reference to López Obrador.

Supporters could be heard chanting “we are going to win” as they waved flags and banners supporting Gálvez’s nomination and the alliance.

“She is going to get us all out of the hole, the Indigenous people, the poorest, the middle class,” said Héctor Chávez, a supporter donning the emblematic red, white and green of Mexico’s flag. “And she is going to boost the economy.”

Representatives of the coalition, the center-right PAN, the leftist PRD and the once-powerful PRI party (which supported Gálvez at the expense of its own challenger, Beatriz Paredes) had called for Gálvez’s nomination earlier in the week.

-Reuters